Treaty & Trump: Being the majority doesn’t mean you’re right! Democracy demands more than the tyranny of 2 wolves
Those who claim Trump has a mandate and the ‘majority’ misunderstand what that means.
Just because you have the majority, doesn’t mean you are right, it just means you have power.
Look at what Trump is doing with that power.
He is appointing the most Ghoulish Cavalcade of Political Circus Freaks, this is a Rogues Gallery of Supervillains, people, who are acolytes and loyalists before they are intelligent people.
They are cogs in his machine.
A terrible, terrible, terrible machine.
America was always a Military Industrial Complex death machine but now Trump’s United States of Wounded Masculinity has elected a naked Plutocracy.
Trump’s brand of Orange Fascism has used the UNDERmensch to empower the UBERmensch.
The ‘majority’ aren’t right just because they are the majority and we are seeing that in NZ.
Majoritarianism is not Democracy!
The NZ Political Right have mistaken anger at Labour as a mandate for culture war vengeance!
2023 wasn’t an election, it was a grudge fuck against Labour by an embittered post Covid electorate who were economically insecure, alienated by woke dogma and heart broken that all Labour could do with a once in a generation MMP majority was ‘good first steps’ rather than transformational leaps.
It has resulted in a Hard Right Racist Government bound together only by a shared glee in bashing beneficiaries, workers, renters, prisoners, the environment, gang members, drug addicts and the disabled.
They all have a particular dislike for Māori and have used attempts at co-governance to fulfil the promise of the Treaty (which is our collective obligation) as a weapon with which to cement into place 19th Century White Settler Privilege and call that ‘democracy’.
They are doing this fundamentally for their donor’s interests who want to be able to rape the environment without consulting with da Maaaris.
In a modern liberal democracy, you acknowledge the power imbalance created in society and you resource to ensure those power imbalances are compensated for!
In a liberal progressive democracy, it doesn’t matter what role you play in the complex super structure of our society and economy.
It doesn’t matter of you are a garbage collector, a dr, a nurse, a drain layer, teacher or tradie – if you all stopped doing your jobs the system can’t work.
Everyone deserves to share the collective harvest of civil society with public services and policies focused on the public good enshrined in the intrinsic civil liberties each individual has.
Wealthy individuals who become mega rich thanks to the landscape generated by those values are required to pay more back into the system they have benefited from beyond the bare necessity of ruthless accountancy practices.
The Political Right are screaming that imposing Qanon talking points as social policy, destroying workers rights, Tobacco deaths for tax cuts and taking $555million from the poorest families are all acceptable because they have the Majority so fuck everyone else!
That’s why on the first day of the Government there were nationwide protests. That’s why in the first week of the new Government global headlines were attacking our u-turn on gas and oil exploration and smoking policy.
That’s why 80 000 protested in Wellington last week!
Dismantling the values of a liberal progressive democracy to cement into place 19th Century White Settler privilege using culture war vengeance as social policy IS NOT Democratic, it’s majoritarianism without any of the values of a true Democracy.
You can’t shit on Renters, Māori, the Environment, Workers, Beneficiaries and Prisoners while pretending to be democratic.
That’s the zeal of the Lynch mob, that’s not Democracy!
Majoritarianism is the whip of the autocrat masquerading as legitimacy. It has none of the soul or wisdom that a Democracy requires to be meaningful.
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The very idea of a second Trump Presidency is so terrible to the present administration that they’ll prefer WW3 to it.
That’s probably the point. There’s no way Putin will use nukes when his mate is about to get back in.
We are ahead of the USA we have had our Trump and his troop of ferrals for a year already .They have done nothing constructive and are about to do their best to destroy NZ ,BOTH AS A SOCIETY AND ECONOMY .
Great quote for this piece title! Note: I want to be able to know whose image or what location the image shows. Could we have that option? By pressing or moving over image or so?
The battle between two ‘wolves’ is inside us all.
One is evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.
The other is good. It is: joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.
“Which wolf wins?” “The one you feed.”
One you nurture and control, one you tame and encourage Pavlovian-wise. Otherwise it is a battle of two halves. The approach would be to understand that simple violent reaction to stimulus would not solve problems and bring uproar, but to pause and think could bring salvation.
There are solutions to the problem of majoritarianism. The first depends on a sense of moral obligation to others (which traditionally came from the Gospel via various religious movements and churches). The second depends on an objective understanding of how society functions (that is a knowledge of political economy which goes beyond the banalities of neo-liberal ideology). When one or both these conditions are met the voters will make decisions which are “better” in both the moral and practical sense of the word.
The church leaders who criticized the Treaty Principles Bill know that duplicity, breach of promise and betrayal will never end well for the guilty ones. On the other side the 42 King’s Counsel and Dame Jenny Shipley understand the importance of a collaborative or at least quiescent Maori population to the survival of the colonialist regime. But there is a section of the political establishment, and a corresponding section of the public, who fail to understand either the practical or moral dangers of the TPB. “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread” as the saying goes. This risk-taking is indicative of a systemic failure of neo-liberal secular society. If the morally and intellectually deficient element of New Zealand society become politically dominant, whether or not in “the majority”, the colonialist regime will be in trouble.
Looking further into the future, the real-time accountability of rangatiratanga will be an effective check upon the excesses and abuses that are an inherent possibility in the zero-sum game of Westminster politics. The cry of “We won, you lost, eat that”, to quote the immortal words of Sir Michael Cullen, will be relegated to history. Government will become more stable, moderate and responsible.